Preliminary plane crash data due next week

General information from safety board

Posted: Tuesday, October 27, 2009

By Ryan Blackburn

Investigators plan to release some general information about the plane crash that killed two men Thursday, but likely won't release full details about what caused the vintage plane to plummet into an Eastside neighborhood for 12 to 18 months.

Authorities are trying to find what led Scott Strong and David Garber to crash nose-first behind a home shortly after taking off from the Athens Ben-Epps Airport about 11:20 a.m.

Next week, the National Transportation Safety Board will post preliminary data updating the case, according to NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway.

The NTSB investigates about 2,000 flight-related accidents a year, and, in each one, either assembles its own investigative team or designates another group - in this case, the FAA - to provide facts before the NTSB renders what it calls a "probable cause" finding.

"It's not very detailed," he said. "It's just basically a status update of where we are."

After the preliminary report, the NTSB will post another document, called a "factual report" in six to nine months that could include more information, Holloway said.

"It's just a more detailed report," he said. "Any of the transcripts, interviews we conduct, maintenance records will be part of it, any of the pilot's history, so it's more detailed information included."

Finally, in 12 to 18 months, the NTSB will release a report concluding what may have caused the crash.

Before the NTSB makes the final determination, FAA inspectors will spend the next few months examining information ranging from the wreckage itself to the pilots' medical records.

"That's why the length of the investigation is the way it is," Holloway said. "We look at everything and make sure to cross our T's and dot our I's before we determine probable cause."

Strong and Garber were flying in Garber's 1957 Japanese Fuji LM-1, a fixed-wing, single-engine aircraft, when they crashed 20 feet behind a home and a little more than a mile away from the Athens airport.

Both Garber and Strong's brother, Steve, had decided to fly into Athens in another plane to pick up the Fuji so that Garber could move it closer to his home in Lady Lake, Fla.